Zashiversk (; ) was a town north of the Arctic circle in what is now the Sakha Republic (formerly Yakutia), Russia. It was located on the right bank of the Indigirka River where the river makes a sharp bend around the town-site. It was founded in 1639. It served as a fortress town and then as an administrative center. In 1803 administrative functions were removed to Verkhoyansk. Subsequently the town suffered repeated epidemics of smallpox. It was completely depopulated by 1898 (one source says by 1863). Spaso-Zashiverskaya church (built 1700) was moved to Novosibirsk by Alexey Okladnikov, and now it exhibited at the Museum of the Archeological Institute of the Russian Academy of Science. Early colony From the end of the Time of Troubles small groups of Russians penetrated and colonized the Far Eastern Arctic, in two distinct waves originating from White Sea area and from the Ural Mountains. In 1639 the company of Postnik Ivanov, a Siberian cossack, reached the site of Zashiversk and stayed there for the winter. The site, located below the rapids (Shivery, шиверы, in Siberian dialect, thus the name Zashiversk) of the Indigirka River, some 870 kilometers from its inlet, marked the crossroads of a river route to Kolyma and Chukotka and a land route (Tsar's Trail, царская дорога) from Yakutsk to Nizhnekolymsk. Postnik reported abundance of valuable sable and fish, significant population of native settlers and nomads as well as silver possessed by the Yukagirs; the voyevoda of Yakutsk responded with establishment of a permanent colony to exploit the opportunity. The Russians enforced taxation of natives through collection of yasak in sable furs and regularly trespassed their self-assumed rights; the natives evaded extortion by resettling to remote areas. Twice, in 1668 (Forsyth: 1666-1667) and 1679, the Lamuts openly revolted and besieged Zashiversk, but the colonists prevailed and fortified the settlement with a wooden stockade, the only one of its kind on the Indigirka. The Lamuts were dispersed with fortress guns, but successfully destroyed a Russian caravan on the way from Yana River to Zashiversk. Their active resistance continued until 1692, by 1700 the Lamuts and Yukagirs were firmly pressed into submission and ended their own fighting among native clans. The wooden tented church of Saviour was erected in 1700. Explorer Dmitry Laptev complained in 1741 that Zashiversk church remained the only Orthodox church from the mouth of Lena River to Anadyr. Noted preacher of